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at a glance ? Your level of resilience determines your strength to cope when times are tough. ? You are responsible for yourwell- being. ? You can control how you respond to what happens to you. ? You have the power to make changes in your life and to move from your comfort zone into your courage zone. ? You can train your mind like you train your body. ? If the norm has been disrupted and your wellbeing is diminished, you need to make changes. ? You have the power to switch your negative thoughts to posi- tive ones. ? Invest in your resilience and well- being to enjoy the long-term ben- efi ts for yourself and all of your relationships. pause and say to yourself, ‘This is really annoying now, but I know I have to do it and I can still get my work done tomorrow.’ This is where we can gain perspective with regard to the inevitable pressures of a school environment. You could say to yourself, ‘It’s only one hour and I’ll cope.’ Feeling helpless and angry is only a fl eeting sense and then you can switch your thoughts and simply get on with what you have to do. Knowing that something is not forever provides a sense of hope. Getting a handle on the permanence of a stressful situation will enable you to determine how long you choose to feel helpless, frustrated or annoyed. Understanding that all bad events are temporary in nature is a powerful means to build your resilience, gain perspective and boost your wellbeing. Is it pervasive? What may be a small problem, like the extra, can very often get blown out of all proportion so that it ruins much of your day, evening at home and even sleep. You can let your mind take you to all the times when you felt undervalued, when you got extra work and when people took you for granted. If you let them, these debilitating thoughts can pervade your life to the detriment of your relationships and everything else that is happening around you. What started as a small inconvenience becomes a catastrophe and your wellbeing is certainly depleted, as is your sense of control and power, and pos- sibly your relationships. Gaining perspective in a situation is cru- cial to building your resiliency and under- standing that ‘stuff happens.’ A resilient mental attitude helps you to deal with it and move on. Ask yourself, in terms of, say, the 80 years that you will live, how much impact this one event will have on you. On a scale of zero to 10, at the time you might catastrophise and rate it as an eight. Is it, really, in terms of everything that life will throw at you? Invest in yourself in the short term and take a minute to create some space and realign your thoughts. Put the situation in its real place and then give it that amount of energy. Don’t let the inevitable irritants 12 teacher january/february 2009 of each day sap your energy for the rest of the day. You have the choice. Is it personalised? It’s really easy to blame and we’re generally very good at it, especially in a stressful situation. It can become either the other person’s fault or our own. When we constantly blame ourselves for what has happened, our self-esteem plummets and it’s diffi cult to retrieve perspective to get back on track. It can lead us into the spiral of neg- ativity and sense of worthlessness. When we blame someone else for ‘wrecking our whole day’ we are negating any responsibility for our wellbeing, yet we have a powerful role in determining how much that situation is going to pervade our day. Take the time to appraise it, make the decision to deal with it and then move on. Finding the balance between optimism and pessimism In a world fi lled with ups and downs, we can’t just naively go through life being con- tinually optimistic and thinking everything is rosy. To lead a balanced and successful life that promotes wellbeing, we need a blend of optimism and pessimism. A small dose of pessimism gives us a sense of the reality of our situation, but it’s our opti- mism that makes dreams and goals possible, giving us hope, a sense of purpose and an understanding of the larger context. Finding the balance between the two will enable us to take a rational view of any situation. Try this challenge. Think of a situation where you fi nd yourself sinking into nega- tive thought processes. Take the time to pause and think about why you spiral into negativity. Ask yourself what has happened, so you can name the situation or behaviour of the other person. Ask yourself about your thoughts, then list them. For example, this always happens to me or I know who did this. Ask yourself how this makes you feel – frustrated, angry, helpless? Ask yourself what is happening to your body as a result of these feelings – heart palpitations, neck pain, back pain, loss of focus? Take the time to gain perspective and think about how diffi cult the situation is for